How to: Install Exchange Server 2013 SP1

How to: Install Exchange Server 2013 SP1

As usual every time you try to install a new version of Exchange Server there are new caveats and what you expect will take 30 minutes takes longer. This time around was no exception. I am still hoping the day will come the installer decides it is going to do what it takes to do everything automatically instead of giving you a list of errors of dependencies you are supposed to install on your own. Though there are good news with Exchange 2013 SP1: The Edge Transport Server is back! Surely lots of people out there are very excited about this; Fortunately for me I don’t care anymore. We are moving our entire infrastructure to the cloud as maintaining a server for just a few users is not worth the time and effort. Regardless we needed to deploy a server OnPremise to modify our hybrid configuration so we are including those details here.

I. Readiness Checks

As I mentioned there are new caveats or shall I say, goodies you need installed for Exchange Server to do its wonders. If you try to deploy it as is you might encounter a Prerequisite Analysis that shows a bunch of errors:

Fear not, most of them can easily go away with the simple execution of a Powershell command. I used to go line by line clicking on each link figuring out what I needed to do… really a huge waste of time.

First off, if you need to update / prepare your AD schema you will need the Remote Tools Administration Pack, If you don’t you will encounter issues like:

” was run: “There was an error while running ‘ldifde.exe’ to import the schema file ‘C:\Windows\Temp\ExchangeSetup\Setup
\Data\PostExchange2003_schema0.ldf’. The error code is: 8224. More details can be found in the error file: ‘C:\Users\UserNAme\AppData\Local\Temp\ldif.err'”.
The Exchange Server setup operation didn’t complete. More details can be found in ExchangeSetup.log located in the
<SystemDrive>:\ExchangeSetupLogs folder.

Entry DN: CN=ms-Exch-ELC-Expiry-Action,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=HQ,DC=CloudIngenium,DC=com
Add error on entry starting on line 1: Operations Error
The server side error is: 0x21a2 The FSMO role ownership could not be verified because its directory partition has not replicated successfully with at least one replication partner.
The extended server error is:
000021A2: SvcErr: DSID-030A0B6B, problem 5012 (DIR_ERROR), data 8610